Endless Night Part 13

What a relief to find myself still sitting in the dark with my back against the wall! I took some deep breaths and tried to calm down. My heart was pounding like a madman's. I had a huge b.o.n.e.r from the earlier parts of the dream.

Dreams are supposed to mean stuff.

I wondered what my dream meant.

Well, I figured it meant one thing for sure: I wanted to f.u.c.k that girl.

And maybe the dream was telling me that I'd get to do it if I tried.

One thing my old man taught me: you don't accomplish anything sitting on your duff. You've gotta work for what you want, get your b.u.t.t in gear, put your nose to the grindstone. In other words, haul your a.s.s down the hillside and hunt for that girl till you find her.

In my dream, she'd turned into Hester on me.

She wouldn't do that in real life, though. She'd stay the same girl all the way till I finished with her. Well, not exactly. There'd be some changes. The changes would be done by me, though. By me and my knife.

Without any help from my friends.

So I got to my feet, brushed off the seat of my Connie kilt, stretched. Even though the dream had taken a nasty turn, I felt pretty good. I felt like the sleep had drained out all my tiredness. The stretching was great. I had to moan because my muscles felt so tight and strong.

If she's down there, I thought, I'll find her.

I started picturing her again in my head, and what I'd do to her.

Then I reminded myself not to forget about the kid. He had to be nailed, too. That wouldn't be any great thrill, but it needed to be done.

Maybe the girl knows where to find him, I thought.

I thought, I'll make her talk.

I'll make her talk, then I'll make her scream, then I'll make her plead and weep, and then I'll make her die.

Yes. Mmmmm.

All these thoughts were getting me pretty excited again.

I was ready.

I took about two steps down the hillside, then heard a quiet, sneaky sound. It came from over to my right, and a ways down the slope. Standing frozen, I heard a soft crunch of weeds, the snap of a twig, another crunch.

Oh, G.o.d, I thought, please let it be her.

Sort of a laugh, really, asking G.o.d favors that way. Like I'm sure he'd be eager to lend a hand and toss me the girl so I could get my jollies demolis.h.i.+ng her.

Somebody answered my prayer, though.

Because I stood there and didn't move a muscle and before you know it, the girl climbed into sight. Just as I spotted her, she stopped moving. She was about fifteen feet over to my right, and almost at the top of the slope.

The only reason I could see her was because she'd stopped where there happened to be a gap in the bushes and trees between the two of us. The gap framed her. It probably framed me for her, too, but that didn't worry me. I hadn't been moving, so she hadn't heard anything out of me and didn't know where to look. Besides, I was standing in the wall's shadow, and she was in moonlight.

I could see her because of the moonlight, but it wasn't enough to show me much. I could just barely make out a dim, blurry face. And one arm. And legs from pretty high on their thighs to about the ankles. The rest of her was mostly invisible.

Her head turned. The way it moved slowly from one side to the other, I knew she was checking to make sure the coast was clear.

A time or two, she stared straight at me.

Her head didn't stop, though, so I guess she didn't spot me.

After looking all around, she stood still for a while. Then she crouched lower, holding herself off the slope with her arms, bending her legs. I figured she planned to crawl the rest of the way to the wall.

But suddenly she seemed to explode off the ground. No more sneaking around. No more caution. She just plain went for it h.e.l.lbent.

And I went for her.

I dashed along the wall, and she threw herself at it and jumped. Her body whomped it. She caught the top and scurried up. Then she flung her right leg out to the side and kicked it up and caught the top with her foot.

But I had her.

I had her.

She was quick, but not quick enough. I was quicker, and close, and I had her.

Her left leg was mine.

I'd grab it and jerk her off that wall, and then she'd all be mine. Not just one leg, both legs-and everything that was between them, everything that was above them.

Mine!

One more stride was all I needed. Both my arms were out, ready to grab her leg. I was paying attention, too. It wasn't like last time when I let myself get distracted. My mind was on my job, not on her s.n.a.t.c.h. Only one thing mattered-getting a good hold on her ankle.

But something grabbed my ankle, first.

A root, a weed, some d.a.m.n thing. Whatever it was, it looped my left foot. The way it felt, you would've thought a G.o.dd.a.m.n cowboy had la.s.soed my foot and yanked it back.

One of my hands actually did make it to the girl.

But only my fingertips. They sort of brushed the side of her foot.

Then the ground slammed me. I kept my head up, at least. Would've been worse, except for that. As it was, the bellyflop punched all my air out. For a while, I couldn't move at all, not even breathe.

When I got my wind back, I rolled over.

The wall was dark. The sky was red and s.h.i.+very with fire-light. The girl was gone.

The girl being gone didn't surprise me. The ground being gone did.

I must've been stretched out at the edge of the dropoff when I rolled over.

Once I started rolling, I couldn't stop until a tree finally put the brakes on me. By then, I was almost at the bottom of the hill. Every part of me felt scratched and b.u.mped. I wasn't sure I could move.

I got up anyway, and started to run.

Speaking of which-gotta run right now. My teeth, so to speak, are floating.

Chapter Ten.

h.e.l.lo. It's me again. I'm back. Not only relieved of my bladder's burden, but now equipped with a bottle of Beck's beer. The dark kind.

My hosts, Mr. and Mrs. Benedict Weston, are nothing if not hospitable. Their casa is my casa.

I was gone a while. Had to check around. Glad to report that all is quiet on the Weston front.

So. Where was I?

Oh, yeah. The girl'd just gotten away from me.

You'd almost think she was meant to escape, the way I got tripped just when I almost had her.

There's a Paul Newman movie, Somebody Up There Likes Me.

Somebody up there must like that girl, or she wouldn't be so lucky. That's not a happy thought, is it? If somebody likes her, it stands to reason he must be against me.

The thing is, luck hasn't gone south on me. Not yet, anyway. Which makes me think maybe G.o.d isn't necessarily on her side, after all.

Things've gotten hairy now and then, but so far I remain unshafted.

Of course, I'm not outa here yet.

I seem to be fairly safe, but it ain't over till it's over. Won't be over till I've removed myself from this neighborhood.

If then.

When is anything really over?

I'll tell you when it was over for Mr. and Mrs. Benedict Weston. It ended for them when I tripped by the wall. They were killed by the root that saved the girl.

That's right.

The girl lived, so it's the farm for them.

Funny how things work out, though I don't suppose the Westons would find it all that amusing.

Here's the thing-because I tripped, she made it over the wall. And right on the other side, the place just had to be crawling with firemen and cops. And they had to be awfully curious. Two houses that close together, burning like h.e.l.l, wouldn't look like an accident to anyone but a moron.

So they're all wondering what's going on, and suddenly a gal comes running and blurts out how one of the bad guys made a grab for her about thirty seconds ago. Where? Just the other side of that wall.

Cops were probably doing sprints for the wall before I even stopped rolling.

My only chance was to run like h.e.l.l and hope for the best.

I chugged to the bottom of the slope, jumped off some sort of a bank, and ended up in a ditch with rocks at the bottom. The ditch didn't have much of any undergrowth. Mostly it was just a rock bed. Instead of cutting across it, I followed it off to the right.

For one thing, I could make better time on rocks than battling through bushes and that sort of c.r.a.p. For another, the cops were probably gonna concentrate their search on the area straight downhill from the wall, so a veer off to one side or the other was bound to give me an edge.

You know, it takes the cops a while to get their s.h.i.+t together.

Right off the bat, probably a few of them-two, maybe even four-would've jumped the wall and started searching for me on the slope. But it might be ten minutes, half an hour, who knows how much longer, before a chopper shows up, or before they can get a whole fleet of squad cars out here to hit the area in a big way.

All I had to do was stay away from the first bunch of hot dogs, then make myself invisible for the reinforcements.

That's all.

I figured I didn't stand the chance of a snowman in h.e.l.l. And my chances, they'd melt down to zilch in about five or ten minutes.

My big plan to go sideways at the bottom of the hill had started out as a good idea, but it was turning into a bad one fast. So I ran up the bank, put my back to the hillside, and went through the G.o.dd.a.m.n heart of darkness till I ran smack into a chainlink fence. It went chinnggg and bounced me right off it. I landed on my b.u.t.t, then got up and rushed the fence. Jumped, caught hold, dug in my toes, and climbed it like a chimp.

I was wearing shoes, by the way. We all wear shoes. Nikes, Reeboks, British Knights, L.A. Gears, Converse, and even Keds. We shave all the hair off our bodies (except for our eyebrows and lashes), dress up in our favorite skins, and generally make like a bunch of wild maniacs. But we always wear shoes. You'd be nuts not to.

Going up the fence, I couldn't see anything but darkness in front of me. That didn't make sense. When I got higher, though, I saw a house. Its windows were dark, but that wasn't what had blacked out my view. The thing is, there was a wooden fence about three feet past the chainlink. My guess is that the chainlink was there first, and the Westons (or someone) decided they didn't like being able to see a place behind their house that hadn't been tamed by bulldozers. Maybe it gave them ideas that creepy things might sneak out of the night to come and get them.

Creepy things like me, maybe?

Nah.

In their worst moments, they never imagined someone like me.

Anyway, the fences hardly even slowed me down.

I'm no acrobat, but I'm not any slouch, either. At the top of the chainlink, I stood on the iron rail and planted my other foot on the wooden fence. Then I jumped. All of six feet down to the gra.s.s on the other side.

I crouched there and wondered what to do next.

Obviously, I wanted to get inside the house.

When we make a foray-that's me and the guys-getting into a house is simple. Tom knows everything there is to know about home security. He checks for alarm systems, then deactivates whatever he finds. Minnow gets us in. Usually, that's a matter of using his gla.s.s cutter on a window. It's simple and quiet. (Except when there's an accident, like last night, for instance, when Chuck wasn't paying attention and his ax handle knocked a drinking gla.s.s into the kitchen sink-cras.h.!.+) Normally, it all works great.

But what I needed to do was disappear, not put a hole in a window for the cops to find.

I could try running around the house and checking all its doors and windows. Some people in L.A. don't keep everything locked tight every moment of the day and night. About one in a million, maybe.

Ringing the doorbell wasn't gonna do the trick, either.

The fact is, I couldn't think of any way to get inside the house without drawing attention to myself.